Bjorn Lomborg on climate change

Bjorn Lomborg writes:

Yes, global warming is real and human-caused, but her vision of climate change as the end of the world is unsupported. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that by the 2070s, the total effects of climate change, including on ecosystems, will be equivalent to a reduction in average income of 0.2 to 2 per cent. By then, each person on the planet will be 300 to 500 per-cent richer.

The world is ending – oh no its not.

We don’t emit CO2 with malign intent. Indeed, it is a byproduct of giving humanity access to unprecedented amounts of energy.

Just a century ago, life was back-breaking. Plentiful energy made better lives possible, without having to spend hours collecting firewood, polluting your household with smoke, achieving heat, cold, transportation, light, food and opportunities. Life expectancy doubled. Plentiful energy, mostly from fossil fuels, has lifted more than a billion people out of poverty in just the past 25 years.

That is not evil – it is quite the opposite.

And a sudden end to such fuels would in fact kill and impoverish millions.

Ms. Thunberg believes that climate change means people are dying, but the fact is that weather-related disasters just a century ago killed half a million people each year. Today, despite rising temperatures but because of less poverty and more resilience, droughts, floods, hurricanes and extreme temperatures kill just 20,000 people each year – a reduction of 95 per cent. That is a morally commendable achievement.

An inconvenient fact.

Ending global fossil-fuel use by 2028 is a flawed plan because green energy is simply not in a place in its development where it can take over what fossil fuels leave behind. A hard by-hook-or-crook transition would cause a real, global catastrophe, sending most of us back into back-breaking poverty. That’s why developing countries, especially, want more fossil-fuel power, not less; they want to lift more people into comfortable lives.

Does anyone really think China and India will choose sending millions of their citizens back into poverty?

Finally, Ms. Thunberg tells us that if we don’t cut off fossil fuels by 2028, the young generation will never forgive us. This, however, is reflective of a blinkered first-world view. When the United Nations asked 10 million people around the world what they prioritize, they highlighted five issues: health, education, jobs, corruption and nutrition. In sum, they care about their kids not dying from easily curable diseases, getting a decent education, not starving to death.

Climate came last of 16 choices. That’s not because it is unimportant, but because for most of humanity, other issues are much more pressing.

They don’t march in the third world for climate change. As Lomberg says more important is health and education etc.